Xigmatek Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition CPU Cooler Review

Introduction

Today, we are testing the Xigmatek Dark Knight “Night Hawk Edition” CPU cooler. It has a conservative design (with tower heatsink, three 8 mm direct-touch heatpipes, and one 120 mm fan) except for the matte black ceramic coating on the heatsink and heatpipes.

The Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition (let’s just call it “Night Hawk” from now on) is not a matte black version of the Dark Knight, which we already reviewed. Although they both have a tower design with three 8 mm heatpipes, those two coolers are very different, not sharing even the mounting system.

A matte black coating is, theoretically, a good idea, since the more reflexive a surface is, the worse it is to irradiate heat. However, on active (i.e., fan equipped) coolers, heat conduction from the fins to the flowing air is the main heat transmitting occurrence, and irradiation is almost irrelevant.

The box of the Night Hawk has a front window that allows you to see the fan (but not the heatsink) as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Package

Figure 2 shows the contents of the box: heatsink, fan, a small bag of thermal compound, manuals, and installation hardware. The Night Hawk comes with only one fan, but it supports two, coming with the rubber bolts for installing two fans.